French President Francois Hollande accused of having affair with actress Julie Gayet

Henry Samuel

Francois Hollande, the French president, is facing a private and political crisis after a celebrity magazine published photographs alleging a "secret love affair" with a film actress almost 20 years his junior.

Closer magazine released pictures it says show the 59-year-old socialist leader entering an apartment block near the Elysee Palace with Julie Gayet, 41.

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A woman whom the publication said was Gayet is seen arriving at the apartment block at night.

The pictures then show the arrival of a man resembling Hollande’s bodyguard. A second man - which Closer said was Mr Hollande, whose face is obscured by a helmet - then arrives on the back of a scooter.

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Other pictures show the first man arriving in the morning with what Closer said was a bag of croissants, then the second man in a helmet emerging from the building and jumping on the back of a scooter.

Rumours: Julie Gayet pictured at the Cannes Film Festival in 2009. Photo: AFP

The magazine wrote: "It's a real passion that has turned their lives upside down and makes them take insane risks."

The magazine angered many in Britain in 2012 when it published topless pictures of the Duchess of Cambridge.

Its latest allegations led to a rebuke from the President. However, he failed to deny the liaison.

A source close to Mr Hollande said he "greatly deplores the invasion of his privacy, to which he has a right as any other citizen does".

The President was "studying what action, including legal action, to take".

Late on Friday, Laurence Pieau, the editor of Closer, announced it was withdrawing the photographs from its website upon request from Gayet's lawyer.

The socialist leader, struggling against record unpopularity levels, does not need another sex scandal.

Already, the two women in his life - Miss Trierweiler and Segolene Royal, the mother of his four children - have caused him immense trouble.

Miss Gayet filed a complaint in March over rumours of an affair with Mr Hollande, which she said were a breach of her privacy. The mother of two, who is separated from their Argentine father, is an established actress.

She has appeared in more than 70 films, some of them with sex scenes. She had a leading role last year in Quai d'Orsay, a satirical film about the French foreign ministry in which she plays a vampish aide.

Her film credits include the titles Shall We Kiss? and My Best Friend.

In December, Stephane Guillon, an actor and comic, dropped heavy hints about the affair during a chat show when he and Gayet were invited to promote a film. She appeared uneasy but laughed when he said: "The President loves the film [Miss Trierweiler] likes it a lot less."

Gayet, a Socialist Party supporter, openly backed Mr Hollande during the 2012 presidential race, describing him in a gushing interview as "fantastic", "humble" and "really ready to listen".

Affairs are nothing new for French presidents. Valerie Giscard d'Estaing had a crash at dawn with a milk float while returning from a night with a lover. His approval ratings soared. Jacques Chirac was privately known as "five minutes, shower included".

Francois Mitterrand, the previous socialist president, kept secret the child he had with his mistress, Anne Pingeot, for most of his two terms.

But Nicolas Sarkozy learnt to his expense that the French can be very unforgiving about their presidents living it up while the country is suffering. His woes began just as his whirlwind romance with Carla Bruni took flight.

More worrying than the polls for Mr Hollande is how his official partner, nicknamed "Rottweiler", will respond.

She was last photographed at the Elysee three days ago.

The daily newspaper Le Figaro reported on Friday that Miss Trierweiler would not be accompanying Mr Hollande on a state visit to the Vatican this month.

France's political class expressed outrage at the "invasion" of Mr Hollande's privacy, punishable with a year's jail and a fine of 45,000 euros ($70,000).

Caroline Roux, a commentator for Europe 1 radio, said the disclosure relegated the president "to the same level as a minor reality TV star".

In years past, when the belief in privacy rights for French public officials was a bit stronger and when the French news media was a bit more chaste, the rumours about a love affair involving the president might have remained the unwritten gossip of Parisian journalists and the well-connected.

The amorous lives of public officials were long considered off limits for French journalists, many of whom have themselves become involved with politicians. This was the case, for instance, with Ms Trierweiler, who began a relationship with Mr Hollande while covering French politics for the magazine Paris Match.

Mr Hollande has four children from a previous relationship with Ms Royal, a senior member of his Socialist Party and a 2007 presidential candidate. Ms Royal and Mr Hollande separated shortly after she lost the 2007 election to Nicolas Sarkozy.

But the expectation that journalists will protect the privacy of the powerful has eroded steadily, if by no means completely, over the past two decades. In 1994, Paris Match published photographs of Mr Mitterrand with Mazarine Pingeot, his daughter from a long-running affair. Ms Pingeot’s existence had been kept hidden from the public but was an open secret among French journalists.

More recently, the 2011 arrest on sexual assault charges of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, then a prominent politician and likely presidential candidate, caused a broad debate among French news media and society at large. Journalists had long gossiped about Mr Strauss-Kahn’s allegedly promiscuous and sometimes aggressive sexual behaviour, including at least one allegation of rape.

There were questions about whether those rumours should have been investigated and made public, given Mr Strauss-Kahn’s prominent place in politics, but those questions have not been resolved. At the time, many French journalists defended the choice not to report on Mr Strauss-Kahn’s behaviour, arguing that to do so would have been voyeuristic and not in the public interest.